Haaretz has just published a story that will certainly disappear due to gag order. In it, Anshel Pfeffer writes that Gabi Ashkenazi prepared a video celebrating his achievements as chief of staff, which was screened at a party marking his final day on the job. What is extraordinary about the video is that among the successes of his time in office it credits the bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor and the Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel has never publicly acknowledged responsibility for either.

So either Ashkenazi has a monumental need to amplify himself and his heroic accomplishments before he faces the glare of police klieg lights; or he’s violated elemental secrecy rules regarding these two events (or both). It’s possible he got approval from the censor to include this material in his video, but it seems highly unlikely. To me it seems like a monumental screw-up. But maybe Israel has finally decided to ‘fess up.

Attendees at the party included former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan who also appeared in the video congratulating Ashkenazi for doin’ a helluva job. I wonder what Dagan thought of these revelations…

Rotter, one of Israel’s major online forums, where some of my work is posted and linked (and heckled) has allowed the image to the left to be published in their Scoops section, but removed two attempts to link to this post. What are they afraid of? I guess Rabbi Rotter is still a little sore at what I wrote about his son, Meir, who harrasses Sheikh Jarrah protesters regularly as a police officer in East Jerusalem.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong as Haaretz has posted the story online. Which goes to show that when you’re the chief of staff, even a corrupt one, you can get away with a helluva lot more than when you’re Anat Kamm.

Well, if the chief of staff wants to produce a video touting his achievements & it includes references to the Syrian attack & Stuxnet, can’t we say that’s the equivalent of ‘”nuff said?” Does he need to come right out on screen and say the words before we believe him?

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7 years ago

duck

Well everyone already knows israel did it. We don’t need to believe him. What would be a bigger deal is if they openly took responsibility, which, in israel’s crazy-land, they didn’t. Dagan also had that kind of praise. Peres is usually praised for his “textile” contributions.

Israel has always been struggling between it’s paranoid secrecy and it’s need to boast.

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7 years ago

Shirin

Richard, is there real evidence that what Israel bombed in Syria was in fact a nuclear reactor? If not, then your title is misleading.

WSJ: Can I ask a broader question? I know the big issue in this region from Iran to Syria to Israel is of a region free of WMDs; nuclear free zone. On the one hand, I know Syria and other countries have been very interested in pushing Israelis to sign the NPT under international auspices and that does not happen, but at the same time is in a little bit of a conflict with IAEA over allegations that Syria has this kind of covered pursued nuclear technology. Can you talk about those and how to get to a nuclear free zone and beat your conflict with the IAEA and if there is a way to have a resolution over their accusations? President Assad: We were a member of the Security Council for two tears, 2002 and 2003, and there was a Syrian draft at that time regarding freeing the Middle East from WMDs and of course who opposed that? The Bush administration, because it included Israel, and actually it is still there, and I think they gave it a blue form, I mean it is not activated. This is our point of view: that it has been a region of conflict for centuries not decades. Regarding the IAEA, Israel attacked this site and we said this is a military site. Of course at the beginning they did not say it is a nuclear site. They waited for eight months and after we rebuilt the site, they said it was a nuclear site. They should be punishing the United States and Israel, especially the United States: why did you wait eight months to say it is nuclear, this is the first point. The second point is what happened with IAEA. They asked us to send experts; and because we were very… Read more »

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7 years ago

John Farley

Dear Richard Silverstein:

There are very serious doubts about whether the Syrian site was a nuclear reactor. See my article

I don’t know what experts you consulted, but you should have spoken with Joseph Cirincione, of the Center for American Progress. He says Israel bombed an arms depot, not a nuclear reactor.

As for Stuxnet, it seems to me that the analyst Cyrus Safdari raises very serious doubts about the official story. Safdari thinks that the Iranian enrichment effort has made progress in the last year. A number of countries have had a problem with Stuxnet, not just Iran. And his research indicates that the Stuxnet worm doesn’t show a particularly high degree of expertise.

I believe the IAEA will be issuing a report soon stating that Syria has obstructed its requests to investigate the site and taking it to the SC for review. I can look for the article, but you can google IAEA and Syria for recent news on this.

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